Chrissy Teigen is sharing details about the tr-agic loss of her son Jack at 20 weeks pregnant.
In a heartbre-aking essay posted to Medium on Tuesday, the model and cookbook author opened up about being d!agnosed “with partial placenta abruption,” recalling the moment after she had spent time at the hospital due to heavy ble*ding when “it was time to say goodbye” to her baby.
“We had tried bags and bags of bl*od transfusions, every single one going right through me like we hadn’t done anything at all,” wrote Teigen, 34.
“Late one night, I was told it would be time to let go in the morning. I cr!ed a little at first, then went into full-blown convulsions of snot and te-ars, my breath not able to catch up with my own incredibly deep sadness.”
“Even as I write this now, I can feel the pa!n all over again,” she continued. “Oxygen was placed over my nose and mouth, and that was the first picture you saw. U-tter and complete sadness.”Teigen initially shared the sad news of her loss on Instagram Sept. 30, posting a series of heartbre-aking black-and-white photos of herself and husband John Legend in the hospital with their baby.
“I had asked my mom and John to take pictures, no matter how uncomfortable it was,” the Lip Sync Ba-ttle host wrote in her essay on Tuesday. “I explained to a very hesitant John that I needed them and that I did NOT want to have to ever ask. That he just had to do it.”
“He ha-ted it. I could tell,” Teigen said. “It didn’t make sense to him at the time. But I knew I needed to know of this moment forever, the same way I needed to remember us ki*sing at the end of the aisle, the same way I needed to remember our te-ars of joy after [son Miles Theodore, 2, and daughter Luna Simone, 4½]. And I absolutely knew I needed to share this story.”
As for those who might have something ne-gative to say about the pictures, “I cannot express how little I care that you don’t like the photos. How little I care that it’s something you wouldn’t have done,” the grieving mother continued. After she delivered Jack, “My mom, John and I each held him and said our own private goodbyes, mom sobbing through Thai prayer,” Teigen wrote. “I asked the nurses to show me his hands and feet and I k!ssed them over and over and over again. I have no idea when I stopped. It could have been 10 minutes or an hour.”
“I dunno how long he had been waiting to be delivered for. That will probably always ha-unt me. Just writing it makes my nose and eyes tingle with te-ars. All I know now is his ashes are in a small box, waiting to be put into the soil of a tree in our new home, the one we got with his room in mind,” she continued. “People say an experience like this creates a hole in your heart. A hole was certainly made, but it was filled with the love of something I loved so much. It doesn’t feel empty, this space. It feels full.”
The Chrissy’s Court star also touched on her moments of sadness and joy since the loss, saying, “I also cr-y when I get mad at myself for being too happy.” She went on, “I feel bad our grief was so public because I made the joy so public. I was excited to share our news with the world. Stories leading up to this had been chron!cled for all.It’s hard to look at them now. I was so positive it would be okay. I feel bad that I made you all feel bad. I always will.”
Teigen concluded by explaining that she wrote the essay “because I knew for me I needed to say something before I could move on from this and return back to life, so I truly thank you for allowing me to do so.” “Jack will always be loved, explained to our kids as existing in the wind and trees and the butterflies they see,” she said. “Thank you so much to every single person who has had us in their thoughts or gone as far as to send us your love and stories. We are so incredibly lucky.”
This Article First Published On PEOPLE